A letter from West

Dear J,

You feel the sway of me -- the ease with which I could knock you on your ass. With one small poke from my smallest finger, you'd be down, splayed on the ground without a hand to pull you up. I am the west -- the fall, the harvest, the ripening, the decay, the letting go, the giving in, the acceptance.

You know the northern night, You welcome the cozy warmth you can create out of winter's cold. You know sister south, , the ease and luxury of summer. There is no way to not know down -- the earth -- 48 years of hundreds of months, the strength and scenery of every step. You know up -- the spirit -- and are a friendly kin to it. Spirit does not scare you. But me? I scare you and so does my twin east.

You teeter totter between the realm of letting go and beginning anew. You hold on too long, you start too late and without self -assurance. We jib jab you at every juncture; you wobble like the weakest weeble. So you lean into north and south, you spread your wide stance firm in only two possibilities -- light and darkness, heat or cold. The more I ask of you, the more you root yourself to that simple polarity. I see your wide shoulders, your solid hips -- even your body is most comfortable in that side-to-side plane.

And I see your big belly and your big ass. You know where those come from? What they were born out of? They are evening the weight pulling at your fulcrum, keeping you equally unmoved by the things that would release and the things that would restore.

I want you to know this. I am not trying to knock you over. I do not want to see you fall. Mine is a loving poke, so that your will lean back and have newness catch you. I want you to see that if you trust me, she will be there ready for you. With the soft burning light of dawn, with her rising waves, with seeds born of seeds. We are a team, east and west. We are born of the same mother and you are the one we refuse to relinquish. I will poke, she will catch. I will push, she will comfort.

You know my voice, you know who I am made of. You can talk to your mother through me. You can say your final words to Carrie through me. I hold the fruit and fracture of all things within me and I know -- I am the one who knows -- how hard it is to release your love and loss to seek more love and life. The way to the east is through the west. The way to rising light is by setting down the day. The only way to reseeding is by eating the harvest of the fall.

Trust me. I am not your enemy. I will save you.

With love and more love, and an abiding trust in you,

The west